Predicating Food Insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa with Machine Learning

Application in Malawi and Tanzania

Yujun Zhou, Kathy Baylis

April 19, 2018

Research Question

Preview of Results

Literature Review

Framework

Indicators to measure food security

Indicators to measure food security

correlation between food security measures

correlation between food security measures

Source: How Do Different Indicators of Household Food Security Compare? Empirical Evidence from Tigray by Maxwell, Coates and Vaitla 2013.

Temporal Variation

Graph of Food Security by Month Malawi

Graph of Food Security by Month Malawi

Spatial Variation

Map of Food Security Maps in Malawi by month

Map of Food Security Maps in Malawi by month

Spatio-temporal variation

Food Security Maps in Tanzania

Food Security Maps in Tanzania

Predication

Importance out of sample predication

Importance out of sample predication

Overfit

Avoid over-fit by using simple models, cross-validation, regularization, ensemble learning

Over vs under fit

Over vs under fit

Models

Data

Main Results for Malawi

Cluster Level prediction R squares in Malawi
Model logFCS HDDS RCSI
Linear Model 0.5319 0.6730 0.0903
Linear Model with interaction terms 0.3140 0.2916 0.0530
Ridge 0.4650 0.6236 0.1230
BaynesianRidge 0.4660 0.6240 0.1230
Lasso 0.5770 0.6860 0.1420
ElasticNet 0.5760 0.6830 0.1200
GradientBoost 0.5767 0.6640 0.0660
Random Forest 0.5387 0.6470 0.0418

Scatterplots for Malawi (FCS)

Scatterplots of different models

Scatterplots of different models

Scatterplots for Malawi (HDDS)

Scatterplots of different models

Scatterplots of different models

Main Results for Tanzania

Cluster Level prediction R squares in Tanzania
Model logFCS HDDS RCSI
2 Linear Model without interaction terms 0.669 0.693 0.119
3 Linear Model with interaction terms 0.014 0.013 0.003
5 GradientBoost 0.783 0.792 0.070
6 Random Forest 0.758 0.760 0.087
8 ElasticNet 0.763 0.769 0.126
9 Ridge 0.272 0.480 0.000
10 BaynesianRidge 0.736 0.710 0.123
11 Lasso 0.752 0.767 0.125

Scatterplots for Tanzania (FCS)

Scatterplots of different models

Scatterplots of different models

Scatterplots for Tanzania (HDDS)

Scatterplots of different models

Scatterplots of different models

Future Steps

Limitations